An Invitation
by Animegirl1129
Summary: In which Dean is not having a good day, but Castiel fixes things a bit. [Dean/Cas] Season 6ish.


An Invitation

_**Written in response to cottoncandy_bingo prompt: backache and hc_bingo prompt: minor illness (we'll call this minor injury, yeah?). Haven't seen the last few episodes of S7 or any of S8 so this doesn't really acknowledge those at all. Probably set like S6ish, while Cas is waging the war in Heaven? I guess. Also kinda blurs the lines between human and angel a little bit. Characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.**_

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"Am I getting old?"

Sam laughs at him, raises an eyebrow and asks, "what?"

"I have to be. Sleeping on these shitty motel room beds and on couches and in cars and on the goddamned floor never used to _hurt_," Dean explains, a hand pressed to the small of his back where an annoying pain has centered itself. He stretches, twisting his back in an attempt to get some relief. It cracks, which helps a little but it's still far from comfortable and the idea of going back to sleep would be an appealing one at this point if the bed were not likely to blame for this problem in the first place. He drags himself to his feet and stumbles toward the bathroom for a hot shower (assuming there is any hot water to be had) in hopes that that might help, "Who'd have thought I'd live long enough to get old?" he grumbles.

"Whatever, dude," his brother says, gesturing to the laptop he's been typing away on for the last hour. "When you're done in there, I think we've got something on those disappearances."

And from there Dean's day does not improve. The backache he'd woken up with hardly fades as they day goes on, there had, in fact, been no hot water (or, for that matter, hardly any cold water), breakfast had consisted of one of Sam's cardboard flavored health bars, and the radio had finally fizzled out of functionality in the Impala, despite the pitiful attempts at pleading Dean had made to his baby. And now. Now Dean is getting thrown into trees by a seriously pissed off Angont, a Native American lake-dwelling creature that had a penchant for drowning it's victims if they got too close and for spreading disease and causing disasters if they weren't quite close enough to grab.

"So not helping the back thing," Dean complains, getting back to his feet in a hurry.

Sam is on the edge of the water, flailing a wooden dagger blessed by a Shaman (thankfully Bobby has a plethora of weird things endlessly lying around, even if they're not a hundred percent sure this will actually kill it, since there wasn't much by way of lore on the thing) at the thing. It doesn't seem to be going well.

Dean continues with his part of the plan, his distract the creature role, while Sam keeps fighting. He gets tossed into a fallen log for his trouble and curses colorfully at the pain that flares in his back.

There's a loud screechy noise and a triumphant shout from Sam followed by what can only be an impressively enormous splash and all of that suggests to Dean that the fight was successful and that he doesn't really need to bother getting up right now.

"Ouch."

"You can say that again," Dean agrees, looking up through one eye at the ginormous figure that leans over him a minute later.

"Ouch," Sam repeats, ignoring the glare his brother shoots him as he helps him up off of the ground. He's scraped up and bruised over and walking like he's 92 instead of 32 as they walk back to the Impala. "Let's get you back to the hotel."

Dean groans. Another night on that bed is not going to make everything stop hurting.

"Or you could sleep in the car?"

"As much as I love my baby, I don't think I can do that, either."

But, he does. He manages to wring the last drops of water out of their shitty, too-small shower, even manages a barely lukewarm temperature, too. Sam patches him up and by the time he lays down on the springy, too-soft mattress, he's asleep.

At least for a while.

He wakes up at three in the morning. Sam's out cold on the other bed, snoring lightly, and Dean's back pulses in pain before he even thinks about moving which is just ridiculous. But then the bed is moving and what the hell?

"Dean."

"Fuck, Cas," Dean sighs, relaxing slightly (but still endlessly tense) when he realizes it's only the angel making yet another overly stealthy appearance. "Wear a bell or something. Jeez."

"What would that accomplish?"

"Nevermind," he says, slowly rolling over to face the angel sitting on his bed. "What's going on?"

"Checking in," he answers. "There were many casualties in the fighting today and I lost several of my best soldiers. I merely wanted to make sure all was well down here."

Dean frowns at Castiel's news of the war in Heaven, but answers the question he's been asked. "Yeah. Sam killed an Angont, I got thrown into a tree. It was a great day."

Castiel tilts his head, then nods. "You're being sarcastic."

"Yes," Dean agrees. "Yes, I am. You're getting better at that one."

"You use it... often."

Dean can't argue with that. He sighs and sits up, cringing as his back protests the movements.

"You're hurt?"

"I wasn't being sarcastic when I said I was thrown into a tree. Two trees, actually," he amends. He feels more than he sees Castiel's eyes on him, flicking over his newly gained bruises, now turning a lovely shade of brutal purple-green, and the places where cuts have started to bleed through the bandages Sam patched him up with earlier.

"I can help," he says, and before Dean can protest, the angel is reaching out and working his angel mojo on him. Dean blinks after the fingers touch his forehead, and when he opens his eyes again, the cuts and bruises are gone. It's hardly the worst injury Castiel has healed on him, but the fact that the pain in his back disappears along with the all over pain from everything else is a spectacular feeling.

Dean hums, shifts experimentally to make sure that the pain is, in fact, gone, and finds that he feels better than he has in quite some time. "Huh," he says, a grin on his face as he peels off useless bandages and tosses them to the bedside table. "I could kiss you for that."

Cas levels him with a curious gaze, like he's trying to make sense of those words the same way he has to make sense of sarcasm or human colloquialisms, but then there's a small grin on his face when he answers, "you could."

Dean's eyes widen with that statement because it's the last thing he'd expected the angel to respond with. Sure, they've done all this sort of flirting (assuming Castiel even understands what it means), and there've been a lot of long, meaningful gazes and a general lack of respect for personal space; and Castiel is one person Dean has always been able to count on, even when he couldn't count on Sammy. So he only kind of surprises himself when he asks, "That an invitation?"

"It's whatever you want it to be, Dean."

And Dean doesn't need any further prompting. He leans forward, though he finds that Castiel has somehow gotten closer in the time since Dean first turned toward him, and kisses him. It's nothing at first, just lips on lips, but then Castiel's hand lands on his shoulder - right where the handprint used to be, where Dean would still swear it is sometimes - and then it escalates. He slips his tongue into Castiel's mouth and his own hands pull at the angel, trying to get him closer. He bites lightly on Castiel's lip and he earns a guttural groan for his effort.

There's a brilliant flash of light that Dean can see through his closed eyelids and he can hear the glass in the windows rattle slightly in the frames. He grins, breaks the kiss and opens his eyes, "a little trouble, Cas?"

"You challenge my control, as always," Castiel answers, looking a little shaken by his near slip-up. Losing that control would not have ended well. "We have to be careful."

Dean nods, that's fair enough. While he is thoroughly pleased with himself for being able to have such an effect on Cas with just a kiss, he doesn't really want to be blinded or incinerated or whatever else might happen should his angel form came out to play for real.

"I should go," Cas says, frowning as he says it. There's a rumble of thunder in a cloudless, rainless sky and his eyes dart up to the ceiling like he's being called back to the chaos he left behind there. "I should go," he says again. He looks back to Dean and adds, "I want to stay."

Dean catches his arm and answers, "you could."

"Is that an invitation?" Castiel asks, countering Dean's earlier question.

He responds with the same answer Cas gave him: "It's whatever you want it to be."

In the morning, Dean wakes without the cumbersome backache, which is unsurprising, given that he slept half on top of Castiel, but the angel still laying (certainly not sleeping) by his side, stirs with a cringe.

"I recommend you obtain better accommodations."

Sam laughs from the small table set in the corner of the room, where he's working on his laptop. "Yeah, next time there'll be two rooms."


End file.
